MEXICO CITY — Nearly three months after a sport utility vehicle carrying two CIA employees was attacked south of Mexico City, divisions have emerged among the Mexican law enforcement agencies trying to determine the motive.

In the past week, top officials at the federal prosecutor’s office and the federal police force have clashed over the case in an unusual public airing of differences by rival agencies, both of which have received U.S. training to help fight the drug war.

Mexican prosecutors this month charged 14 federal police officers with trying to kill the CIA employees and a Mexican navy captain who was riding with them as they traveled to a naval shooting range near Mexico City on Aug. 24 for an unspecified exercise.

The police officers, who were dressed in civilian clothes and riding in unmarked SUVs, fired on the vehicle. The prosecutor’s office said this week that 152 bullets struck the vehicle and that several police commanders were also under investigation for trying to cover up the officers’ role, in part by ordering them to change into their uniforms before they were interviewed by investigators.

The attack ended when navy personnel and other federal police units quickly arrived. The wounded Americans were evacuated from the country the following day.

In charging the officers, the prosecutor’s office accused them of deliberately trying to kill the vehicle’s occupants, judging by the number of shots fired, but left open the question of why. The police have offered their own version of events, which similarly leaves many questions unanswered.

In that vacuum, theories abound among Mexican and U.S. officials, including the possibility that the gunmen targeted the vehicle by mistake and tried to cover it up by killing the witnesses. The prosecutor’s office said Sunday that the attack did not appear to be linked to organized crime.

Last week, a report from the internal affairs unit of the federal police, leaked to the newspaper Milenio, accused the prosecutor’s office of a “witch hunt” against the police. After that, the police director, Maribel Cervantes, appeared on a closely watched political talk show to defend her agency.

“When I spoke to various American authorities, I was very emphatic in that, in accordance with the information we had, it did not involve an ambush, nor a deliberate attack,” she said on the program, “El Asalto a la Razon,” adding that she had spoken with the U.S. ambassador, Anthony Wayne.

An embassy spokesman confirmed the conversation and the sharing of information between the governments but declined to comment because the investigation had not concluded.

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